The dry run. Hiking-wise.

The kids and I went on a 'dry run' for our summer hiking today. What does that mean? That means we went with friends who could help me out if I'd overpacked or overlooked something or overestimated hiking ability of littles. It went wonderfully.

The hike we chose (out of Hiking Idaho) was a bit ambitious for a five-year-old and two two-and-a-half year olds, but not by much. It was a bit over two miles, but we covered that slowly. The terrain was not flat, but that added interest more than being too physically difficult. If I had remembered jackets for my girls, the wind wouldn't have affected them, and that would have helped.

We met up with our friends at a scenic overlook by the Snake River. Stunning view. Made scared-of-heights-li'l-ol-me lose my equilibrium just looking through the seven foot tall chain link guard fence, but my girls loved it.
That is a deep canyon.

When we got to the trail head, I got all situated with Gray on my back and a waist backpack (I will *not* say that I wore a fanny pack) on under his bum. That carried a first-aid kit, water bottles, snacks, bird and flower identification pamphlets, a map, diaper change kit, bug spray, pocketknife, a compass, and my car key. Next time, when we're on our own, I'll actually be carrying more - a little sketchbook and pencils so that the girls will have an excuse to sit down and relax along the trail, a magnifying glass, jackets for the kids.

We started up the trail with the kids predictably running off their excitement for the first few hundred yards. The first mile or so of the trail was lodgepole pine, absolutely beautiful and I can't believe that I got no clear pictures of it. Next time.

The girls all found walking sticks. Bella just used hers like a divining rod - it found every puddle of water in or around the trail, Ains used hers as a sword (of course), and Hannah carried hers for a lot longer than any of us expected just in case she ran into a giant who needed a walking stick.
I'm going to try to find a mushroom identification book for the next time we travel this trail - so many different kinds of mushrooms in the pine tree section of the trail. Ains was excited about all the fairy houses and Hannah was so intrigued by the different places they grew, the different sizes and shapes ... I wish I knew how to take close-up pictures of these things.

After we got out of the pines, we passed through a meadow.
I expected the meadow to be much smaller than it was - and much warmer. The wind blowing across the top of the mountain was cold. It also passed right by a Boy Scout camp where we were almost run into by five scouts who shouted frantically "HAVE YOU SEEN A FLAG????" Um, no. And that's cheating. Keep looking.

I heard Jo singing "Climb Every Mountain" and turned around to see this -
I like having friends who will unselfconsciously belt out fitting songs from musicals.

After the meadow, we descended into a section of the trail populated by Quaking Aspens. Cottonwoods? I don't know their appropriate name, but they were pretty. Hannah told her daddy that her favorite part of the hike was 'the trees singing when we left the meadow.'

We saw lots of these on the Quaking Aspens and on the trees dotting the entrance and exit to the meadow. Lots and lots of these little caterpillars just emerging from their egg sack.
Ainsley learned the fine art of becoming interested in anything and everything when she needed to slow down.
Then she recruited Bella to discuss her findings.
After we'd crossed through the Quaking Aspen section...
we crossed back into Lodgepole pine, and then to our cars. In the last section, Ains and I got ahead of the rest of the group and immediately were rewarded with lots of bird sightings. Ruffled Grouse, Pileated Woodpeckers, as-of-yet-unidentified birds that are captured in blurry images on my camera. It was exciting. And she saw three Bald Eagles. With red breasts, eating worms, natch.

Back at the trail head, we busted out a honeydew melon. (The amazing part of this photo is Grayson - not on my lap. He loved Reese.)
Then our friends left and we stayed at the picnic site for a bit longer, playing and chatting. Gray looks so grown-up.
I found these little pamphlets somewhere ... Barnes and Noble maybe? ... and grabbed them for just such a journey. Lightweight and laminated, made to be handled outdoors and by little hands.
I came back from taking Gray and our stuff a few yards down to the car to see this - Hannah trying to find the birds she'd seen (Ains told Hannah she'd seen a Macaw in the forest and Hannah couldn't find it in the pamphlet - go figure.) and Ains at the other end of the table, staring at the yellow flowers (Heart Leaved Arnica, we discovered), trying to locate them in the flower pamphlet. It was endearing, this sight.
So that was our first hiking trip of the summer, and it was a huge success. I learned that I was doing a lot of stuff right, that I forgot some stuff, that going by ourselves will have some perks (not keeping to someone else's schedule), that going with friends has its perks (I laughed really hard and my girls adore Bella), and that it is nice, even when you live in the country, to get out in wild nature. It feeds the soul.

I think this has been my longest post ever. And I've paid for it dearly. Cygnus crashed at my feet about five minutes after I started downloading the pictures (which takes forever, Photobucket) and has been cheerily farting up a storm the entire time. Maybe he's frustrated that we didn't take him with us. Three kids was enough for me on my first trip out. Maybe next time.

The first 'real' camping trip of summer.

Last weekend was family time. Our first camping of the year in a tent, out of our yard. I was glad we'd done some dry runs at home.

The weather the first night and day was cold and rainy. Not that that slowed the kids down at all. Every time I looked for Hannah, this is what I saw...






Six girl cousins within four years of each other. They kept melding into one group, breaking into little groups, melding again. The little groups were never the same either, they were composed of different girls each time. A few disagreements, no outright fights. It was lovely and at the end of the weekend, Hannah hated to leave.

Ainsley's age group is more diverse, gender-wise. She had a blast also, playing with cousins, exploring her environment. She did a lot more checking in with her parents, but she had time for a few good laughs...

and she explained some stuff to her cousins.

Gray did a lot of this.


Though if this is an indication of how he feels about camping, I just don't know what to do for the rest of the summer.


I carried him in-arms most of the time because he hates being carried in a carrier on the front of my body, but if I put him on my back, the mosquitos got free rein.

In the afternoon, we went to Minnetonka Cave and went on the tour there. The staircases that go up and down in that cave are unbelievable. The cave has a lot of interesting formations (that interested the kids almost not at all) and houses five species of bats, one which is endangered.

We only saw two bats. I tried to get a picture of one of them - it was quite far away - and this is what came out of that. I thought I had him centered in the picture. Not so much.

Hannah stayed up towards the front of the group with an aunt and some cousins.

Ainsley did see one formation she liked - the pile of pirate gold.


I learned a few interesting things on the tour. The temperature in a cave never changes and is the average temperature of the area where the cave is located. Also, at the back of the cave, where no possible light from outside got in, the tour guide turned off the lights for a minute. It was so dark that your eyes would never adjust, she said. Damn it, I lost my chance to Gollum-ize.

Outside the cave was much more interesting for the littles. Lots of little Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels running around.
Running around quite close, actually.

Ainsley wanted so badly to hop down off that wall and go pet one. It was hard for her to understand that such a tiny creature was a wild animal that might bite her.

After the caves, most of the family went home, but we stayed an extra night with one other family. The next morning was cool, but turned warm by eleven o'clock. The kids had a lot of fun running around the camp - it was a stunningly beautiful campground - and we took a four-wheeler drive up to Paris Ice Cave. It's a cave that always has ice in it, so I don't even want to know what the average temperature there is. There was still lots of snow on the ground outside of it.

Back at camp, the kids played some more while the adults packed, and then they said goodbye to each other. (By this point, the boys were not having anything to do with pictures.)

When we were driving away, Hannah said "Will we see Zee again tomorrow?" Never too much of a good thing, my friends. Never too much.

Today we...

played with watercolor pencils.





smiled so much the Mother melted into a pile of malleable goo.



had a huge mud fight and did a lot of gardening.

Ainsley saw a Bald Eagle sitting in the tree outside the bedroom window.
(that not so clear picture is of a robin not two feet away outside our window)

watched Horton Hears a Who

sang lots of songs. read lots of books. played with kittens.

made coffee filter hats.





played My Little Pony. read more books. crashed.

(This is actually a 'Yesterday we...' post, but dang Photobucket combined with my dang internet connection makes for a very frustrated blogger. I think my picture quotient is going to go down.)

Snapshot Sunday

You wanted to see our toilet, right?




The after-effects of camping.

How it began.

Other snapshots -
Sunnymama
Heart Rockin' Mama
Lovely Kyre

Poodles, the 18th century, and magpies.

-Ainsley asked me to put this hat (scroll down to the debutante picture) - all pink and fur and ribbons - on Cygnus. I did and between giggles she said "He looks like a poodle!" It made me laugh because I don't think she's ever in her two-and-a-half years on this earth seen a real live poodle. She recently asked for a poodle book from the library and she went through it, but I don't recall more than a few of the poodles in the book being dressed up fancy.

-Every so often, Hannah says something that even I don't know where she got it from. The other day, Ainsley came into the bathroom where Hannah and I were, grabbed some bracelets and put them on. Hannah looked at them, noticed that the pink bracelet was not the closest to Ainsley's wrist, and decided to help her out with some fashion advice. "Ainsley," says she, "are you stuck in the Eighteenth Century or something? The pink goes in front."

Ainsley responded with her usual impertuable "Oh. Otay, Hannah." and moved the bracelet while I just stared at Hannah. "Where did you learn that, Hannah?" "I don't know. It's just in my brain." Fair enough. Luckily, Matt knew where she'd heard it. They'd watched some Duck Tales episodes on YouTube and the Eighteenth Century featured prominently in one of them. Random.

-Ainsley's at the cute stage where words that are similar get used in place of each other. Example: Killdeer becomes John Deere. As in "Mommy me just saw a John Deere! It was peetending to be boken!"

Or Rhubarb Pie becomes Magpie. As in "Mommy are you making magpie again?" (Actually, 'magpie' is quite common around here since it's Ains' current favorite word and insult. You get her frustrated and you're likely to hear "You .... you .... MAGPIE!")

-Hannah insists that Grayson's first word is 'Hannah'. She could be right. He says 'NAnnah!" clearly and frequently when he looks at her. He also says it clearly and frequently when he's looking at cats, dogs, birds, flowers, the sandbox, the bikes, and horse poo. But Hannah believes it's her name, so sibling rivalry has kicked in. Every time Gray says "NAnnah!", Ains gets right in his face and starts chanting "AINSley. AINSley!" She does this so much that if he were a parrot, he'd be repeating her name by now. In fact, I'm surprised that the local crows aren't flying around cawing "AINSley. AINSley!"

What is that on your feet?

Remember me mentioning that we'd have spotty internet connectivity for a bit out here? Yeah.

On to happier subjects.

This evening, when Matt came home from work, I told him that Gray was asleep in the bedroom and that I was heading out to plant more sunflowers. I came back in an hour later and Matt was crashed so I headed to check on Gray.

I'd left the door to the bedroom open, but it was now shut (by Gray when he'd gotten up) and it was locked (likely from Ains playing with it). No problem. It was one of those doorknobs with a hole in the center, so you could easily unlock it by pushing a match in there. Or a skewer. Or a chopstick. Actually, none of those worked like they were supposed to.

After a few minutes of trying to open the door, I could hear Gray going from wanting to come out to fussing because he could hear me but couldn't see me. I got Matt and asked him to try. When he started trying, Gray started fussing louder, so I laid down to look under the door and try to get him to play with my fingers to distract him.

When I looked under the door I saw the cutest little baby feet walking back and forth. Dirty little baby feet. When had he gotten in mud? I didn't remember him being in mud before he went down for his nap.

Then he walked away from the door and I saw it. His diaper. Off and laying on the floor and poopy and he was walking through it. Then he turned and came back to the door. Through his diaper. I was narrating this to Matt who decided right about the time he heard "OMG, it's poop!" that that doorknob needed to come off.

While he unscrewed the doorknob, I got the bathtub running and as soon as Matt got the doorknob off, he was handing the babe to me to wash. Washing Gray was much faster than scrubbing the carpet. That kid covered a lot of ground in the room in a few minutes. Mud would have been easier.

How hot is it now that summer is here?

Hot enough to melt crayons on the deck.


Hot enough to need root beer popsicles.


Hot enough to make a fruit salad.



It's always hot enough to tease your sisters.


Maybe a bit too hot to do 'training'.


But it's never too hot to go for a pony ride.


By the way, Ainsley's most common phrase these days is 'Change cothes! I change cothes.' Thanks to her older sister, she has figured out how much fun it is to change clothes ten times an hour. Go back and look at all the pictures again - fun stuff.

Pirates are funny.

Hee.

Hee hee.

Heeheeheeheeheehee!

Arrrggghh!!! Me im Pincess Piwut AINSEY!


Hee.

Art with flowers and fabric.

Before we moved, we made flower art with flowers and grasses from our property. I got the idea from OLM. Of course. She's full of lovely ideas.

We gathered up the necessary collecting receptacles. A bug net for Ainser...

and a basket for Hannah.

Then we filled the basket full of flowers and grasses and leaves.

The bug net got filled with chicken eggs.

Then we laid a piece of linen down on some cardboard, arranged the pretties on top, covered them with another piece of linen, and the girls took turns hammering.

I couldn't get pictures of their 'flower paintings' because they've carried them with them in their backpacks since we made them and... I'm afraid I can't find their backpacks. I know they're around somewhere. Maybe the car? Or the kitchen? Or under boxes in the craft room? I dunno.

Anyway, here's the one that they helped me arrange and make.

It's sitting in my 'to do' pile in the craft room. I was just going to put it in a frame and put it in their room, but it's calling to me. I'm thinking maybe I'll embroider to clarify and add detail? Not much, just a bit. I'm still thinking on it.

Getting ready for camping.

Doing a dry run tonight. I promised the girls that if it was a nice night, we'd pull out the tent and camp in the yard. When we got back from our chore run to the old house and I brought the tent out to the yard, both girls started squealing.

They squealed as I pulled it out of the bag.

They squealed as we set it up.

They squealed as they got sleeping bags and pillows.

They squealed as they brought out books.


And then they sat down on their sleeping bags, it got quiet, and I heard Hannah ask Ainsley "Now what?" Ainsley said "Don know, Hannah."
So they came out and started running around the tent and squealing like it was a Chinese Fire Drill.

We said good night to Daddy and went out to the tent. I read books while they alternately bounced up and down giggling hysterically and reorganized their stuff. Then Ainsley passed out. Then Hannah passed out. The squealing has stopped.

Now I have come in for some water and must head back out again. I am so glad we got the first-time-sleeping-in-a-tent squeals out of the way before any family reunion camping trips.

Good night!

Almost all of our books are packed up and sitting in boxes in our bunkhouse. Somewhere in those many boxes are the Little House books that are being asked for daily.

This has been my bookshelf for the last month or so.

That and about twenty or thirty library books in the bedroom book basket. And any books spread around the house. When we packed the house itself to move, these were the books that needed to come over.

My husband said something along the lines of "Wow. We do have a lot of books." Um. ... ... That's mostly library books. I hate to take him in the bunkhouse and show him the boxes of books.

Funny thing you notice when you move quickly is where your priorities are. Ice cream makes it, spoons don't.
So you use what you have and bring the spoons over on the next trip. And the chocolate sauce. Don't know how my priorities got screwed up enough to forget that.